Australian Collection Society Upset It Doesn't Get To Collect Extra For Radio Simulcasts Online

from the entitlement-society dept

As various collection societies have been getting more desperate to collect more and more fees, a favorite move is to focus in on sky high internet "streaming" rates. In the US, webcasting rates are many, many times higher than the royalties that radio has to pay. It's why there still remain many questions about whether or not webcasting is a viable business, even for giants like Pandora. It's particularly ridiculous when it comes to radio stations who choose to "simulcast" their stations online. Thankfully, down in Australia, there was a ruling that made some sense, saying that radio stations shouldn't have to pay much higher internet rates just to rebroadcast their radio stream online. But what's really telling is the response from the local collection society, PPCA, who wanted to collect all that money:

"We are disappointed by this ruling on a technical point relating to internet streaming but will continue to work hard for a better deal for artists and labels," comments PPCA CEO Dan Rosen.

"Australia remains out of step with other jurisdictions such as the U.K., Canada and New Zealand where radio operators pay significantly higher license fees."

Perhaps the question should be whether or not it's right that those other jurisdictions make radio stations pay so much more for promoting artists? Given the history of payola, where the record labels have shown -- empirically -- that they get tremendous value out of having their artists played on the air and are willing to pay for it... it seems pretty silly to then demand that the radio stations turn around and pay "higher fees" back.

Why should it be the governments job to make everyone pay more and to add burden onto the lives of consumers just to enrich the government-industrial complex. The government should be pro-consumer, the whole point of IP laws should be to expand the public domain to help out consumers, not to burden them.

Well, duh.

If I pay somebody to play my song, that just proves there's value in having that song played. So why should the damn dirty hippy DJ get the benefit when I (had someone under contract) create that song?

They didn't even pretend to have any kind of argument for their views. They just said they're disappointed. I'm disappointed when I can't get a cookie, but I don't ask for legislation to have cookies provided.

I think part of this is driven by the idea that there is just all kinds of money on the internet.
Facebook worth kajillions, Google gets billions and they have no idea how these companies are making their money other than... they are on the internet.
They see the big names and assume they can just back a truck up to the dsl modem and fill it with cash. They don't understand there is huge competition online for attention, and when you just assume it HAS to be worth more you screw yourself. Because webcasters can't afford your fees, so there is no reason for them to bother with your content. They look for content from reasonable people, and that gets promoted. The old guard bellows that the internet is stealing money from them because they aren't earning anything... because they priced themselves out of the game.

Payola

Payola should be legal. Radio stations are leaving money on the table by allowing payola to be illegal. Record companies want their content to be promoted and are willing to pay for the privilege. Content is advertising, advertising is content. The content only moves off the shelves (and gets paid for) after it has been advertised. Radio stations provide a very valuable promotion function. They are entitled to get paid for that.

Due to the illegality, the system for getting money from record companies to radio stations is terribly inefficient. The money goes through various intermediaries, to provide plausible deniability to the record companies. These intermediaries all take substantial cuts. Those cuts are money which should be getting to the radio stations, but never gets to them. Since the payola is illegal, only big boys may play, hence the radio stations miss out on any revenue from small players. Also, any honestly run record company (yeah, as if ...) will refuse to participate, thus denying the radio stations more revenue.

It is yet another example of unnecessary government interference with the free market. Legalise payola now.

Re: Payola

Re: Payola

Payola was made illegal for many good reasons (more than I am aware of).

What you are proposing would lock out smaller and/or independent artists from having their music played in a radio station. All the big labels would have to do is provide a nice lengthy play list of songs and accompanying (payola) advertising fees which would flood the radio with loudness warred mainstream media cr*p while not keeping those who choose not to (or refuse even but reasons why are off topic) to do a deal with the devil.

Payola had no limits to how many radio stations they could also play their little advertising scam with so I'd give it 2 weeks tops before radio station changing becomes an exercise in futility (unless they collaborate and leave us with Sony/BMG on say 875 AM, Universal on 912 AM etc.).

Couple that with a rise in radio fees to choke out those who refuse to take the money and we're back in what they would call the golden days of radio all over again.

To prevent payola from being abused would be an exercise in futility (we are talking about the same mob that rated Video Casette Recorder operators as the equivalent of The Boston Strangler FFS!) so we are far better off leaving things as they are today TYVM.

(I presume your not a paid grassroots shill astroturfing with that comment of yours. If indeed this is the case however: GTF off my lawn and back to work replacing all my brick walled CDs with properly mastered Vinyl recordings).

Re: Re: Payola

And the record companies will have spent a crapton of money locking their competition out of a dying medium while their Pandora/iPod-equipped customers remained oblivious to the whole affair. Remember, every dollar spent on radio is a dollar that doesn't go to Congress. A slightly reduced driving experience would seem a small price to pay.